"Teacher's Classroom Strategies Should Recognize that Men and Women use Language Differently" - Deborah Tannen

Deborah Tannen's article “Teacher's Classroom Strategies Should Recognize that Men and Women Use Language Differently” comes across to me as a very persuasive piece of writing which serves to communicate a point convincingly across.

Tannen attempts to get teachers to evaluate the way they teach, depending on the gender make-up of the class. She hints that current methods of teaching (described by one male teacher as 'I have students read an article, and then I invite them to tear it apart. After we've torn it to shreds, we talk about how to build a better model”) are insufficient in promoting total class participation, based on the primary assumption that males and females are inherently different, and because of this, women tend to be more quiet in classrooms which have a competitive and expressive atmosphere. This, she argues, is disadvantageous to women and thus, supports her argument that teachers should change the way they teach.

Through the use of personal examples and anecdotes, Tannen tries to insert and position herself as one of the intended audience (academia and teaching staff), showing that she too knows what it is like to teach a class, putting herself on a peer-to-peer level instead of that of an academic sitting in an ivory tower. As such, the article comes across as somewhat informal, adopting a casual tone which is made more 'credible' through her use of personal examples. It seems as though she is entering a conversation with her readers, similar to a casual interaction that might take place at any kitchen table – rather than hard-selling her point. This helps her to avoid a defensive and critical response which might have come with an academic critique of teaching practices, and instead gain support for her argument and convince others that teachers should review the way they conduct her classroom. She ends off, not with a strong proposition urging people to change their classroom strategies to a 'correct' way (and hinting that what is being done now is wrong) but instead on a gentler note, encouraging her peers to think about her argument and how it is or is not in line with their current teaching practices.

It has often been stereotyped that women are generally the more expressive sex, preferring to talk about things and express their emotions whilst men are more to-the-point and communicating to give/share information. However, Tannen points out that this is not the case in a classroom atmosphere, where “male students are more likely to be comfortable attacking the readings ... (while) women are more likely to resist discussion they perceive as hostile”. Based on this observation, she argues that classrooms are wildly different places and hospitable to different students based on different teaching styles. As most university lecturers tend to be male, she is insinuating that such methods disadvantage the female gender by encouraging an openly verbal atmosphere which forces students to speak out and argue their point (which, to Tannen, is favourably biased towards males).

In line with the expectation that all scholarly articles should cite other academic work as proof of background research, Tannen does indeed included findings by other people in the academic community, particularly the research of anthropologists and sociologists on the topic of gender. Not only does this serve to back up her argument, it also situates her within the community, which possibly helps her gain more support in terms of readership. However, I find certain faults with how she has included such previous research. Firstly, I find that Tannen is selective in terms of the arguments she uses – she generalizes them and takes them out of context; making findings come across as facts. For example, she cites that “the research of sociologists and anthropologists such as Janet Lever, Marhorie Harness Goodwin and Donna Edner has show that girls and boys learn to use language differently in their sex-separate peer groups”, yet does not qualify the statement in terms of space and time – in short, taking it out of context and presenting only one side of the research on the effect of peer socialization on language patterns. Besides such generalizations, Tannen is also implicitly implying her view that gender differences in language are essentially so (an essentialist view), merely paying lip service to the fact that there is another school of thought, namely the social constructionists.

The bulk of Tannen's article describes her own experience in the form of a narrative case study of the 'mini-experiment' she conducted on her class, though I feel that this is not convincing as it is not as generalizable as she presents it to be. However, this is in line with how she has structured her academic argument; to convince, and not to present research.

In conclusion, I feel that Tannen has made use of an innovative strategy to encourage her readers to think about her argument, though I still have a few reservations regarding her essentialist stance, stereotypical assumptions and selective use of data. This piece makes for easy reading and encourages us to take her argument up as food for thought, though I would not consider it to be very academic in terms of writing style and examples used.